


In Vino Veritas

by rivendellrose



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 18:51:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9136999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose/pseuds/rivendellrose
Summary: Originally posted on Livejournal in September of 2006.Ivanova settles in for a quiet drink during the civil war, and gets some unwelcome company.





	

Everyone has a drink that’s inherently _theirs_. Not a drink that they have every time they go out - that would be unreasonable, impractical, and Susan Ivanova can’t abide either of those traits - but a drink that is quintessentially appropriate to them, something that sums up their personality and their attitude toward alcohol. A person who spends time with bottles pays attention to this. Sinclair, for instance, is a wine man. It comes from the Catholic upbringing, from the stoic and solemn attitude, and from the fact that, deep down, he’s an old-fashioned sort, a traditionalist. Garibaldi doesn’t drink anymore, but Susan is fairly certain that when he did it was whiskey that called to him the most. Now he only drinks water, and she respects that choice for the near-necessity and show of willpower that it is - that’s Garibaldi, too strong and practical to let even his own mind hold him down. Sheridan, he’s a screwdriver kind of guy - he’s too fond of oranges not to be, and it expresses something about his peculiar sense of humor, his way of looking at the world from an angle. Maybe it explains why she and him have always gotten on so well. 

Talia liked gin and tonic, and, in brief and cheerful moments before her programming brought the sky down on them all, proved to have quite the talent at making martinis. Funny skill for a telepath (especially one as seemingly stuffy as she’d been), but she’d been a bit of a funny telepath, Susan figures.

Susan drinks vodka - preferably straight. Nothing fancy, fruity, or posh - just straight, cold vodka that burns on the way down and fills her stomach with fire. It’s traditional, and it’s simple. More than anything else it’s easy - she’ll drink almost anything at the bars, but at home it’s easiest just to pour a bit of the plain, clear vodka into a glass... or drink it straight out of the bottle, depending on just how bad the day has been.

She’s been drinking a lot straight out of the bottle, lately. With the war going like it is, anything else seems pointless.

It’s never occurred to her to think about what Marcus’ drink would be. She figured that he was trained on Minbar, probably he’d have picked up their intolerance of alcohol - though that didn’t really make sense, did it? After all, the Minbari didn’t have a moral issue with hard drink, just a genetic intolerance... So it probably shouldn’t surprise her when Marcus interrupts her private brooding time at a corner table in one of the darker bars down below.

“I come bearing gifts,” he announces, and sets a tall glass filled with something almost violently blue onto the table between them. He’s grinning like a child who brings home pasta glued to cardboard and shellacked in glitter and paint, and it automatically makes her want to be angry with him. The perky pink umbrella and bright cherry stuck into the drink aren’t helping his case.

“That’s nice. I came to be alone.”

“Nobody comes to a _bar_ to be alone. You could just as easily drink in your quarters.” He leans over the chair opposite her. “Mind if I sit?”

“If I tell you no, will you take that thing away?”

“Nope. It’s all yours.” He sits anyway, and pushes the drink closer to her.

“What the hell is this thing, Marcus? Other than hideous.” The color is growing on her - she’s always liked blue - but the sheer... _girliness_ of the drink is offensive in this context. Not even Talia’d had the right to offend her public dignity this way.

“Just taste it.”

“I don’t drink anything that comes with its own accessories,” she informs him primly.

“Fine.” He removes the umbrella, and bites off the maraschino cherry it was attached to. It figures that he’d like those things. And he’s still smiling in that insufferable way, just chewing the cherry and watching her. Waiting. 

Two can play at that game. Susan settles in for a good, long stare. She can outlast him. 

“I’m not going to leave until you’ve tasted that, you know,” Marcus informs her. “And I, unlike you, don’t have any particular time that I have to be up tomorrow morning. You’re on duty in C&C tomorrow, aren’t you? If I had to get up that early, I’d want to be in bed in at least a few hours...”

Outlast, maybe, but possibly not outmaneuver. Not when she’s already had a bad day with a vodka chaser or three. Susan glares at him, then takes a quick sip of the bright concoction. For all that it’s the brilliant, crystal blue of some kind of candy, it’s less sweet than she’d imagined - there’s lemon in there, and under it is the sharp, clear tang and burn of really strong, good vodka. It’s nothing she’d drink on her own, but, despite herself, she can’t help thinking it’s really not all that bad. It must be the alcohol talking.

And she must be doing a poor job of hiding that, because Marcus’ grin is practically ludicrous in its joy. “Aha. I thought so - there’s nothing so bad that a silly drink can’t fix it.” He’s twirling the cherry stem still, and for a moment Susan has an insane impulse to tell him that back in the academy she had a knack for tying those things with her tongue. Saying something like that would imply that she’s trying to impress, though, so she remains silent, and fights off a free-floating memory of Talia - cool, put-together Talia! - showing off the same trick one drunken night in her quarters. 

_What do you do when even drinking brings back too many memories?_

The answer is clearly ‘drink more.’ Susan downs a good fourth of the blue stuff in one gulp, and is absurdly pleased at Marcus’ surprised expression. She’s well on her way to drunk, she thinks, and maybe it’s not a good idea to do that with him right here looking... interested. And possibly even interesting in spite of himself. Now that’s _proof_ that she’s had too much.

“You don’t have anything,” she tells him, hoping that her words are more clear than they sound to her own ears. If they aren’t, he doesn’t indicate. 

“I prefer to keep a clear head.” He shrugs. 

“That’s not fair. You can’t be sober if you’re getting me to drink.” She raises a hand, beckoning the bartender, who knows her habits well enough that the bottle of vodka is already in his hands before she shakes her head and points at Marcus. “For him,” she clarifies, and it takes a minute for her to realize that the bartender is waiting for an actual order. 

He’s smiling still when she turns to him, and he’s holding the damned cherry stem still. It has a perfect little knot in the center of its stem. _Bastard._

“What do you want?” It comes out sounding more like a challenge than a request, but she assures herself that its enough to make the effort. 

“Dark ale.”

The bartender snorts. “Brand?”

“Doesn’t matter... a pint of Black Space is fine.” His eyes don’t leave hers, and she has to turn away before the bartender hands him the tall, froth-topped glass. It’s not that it bothers her, she assures herself - it’s just that she doesn’t need that. He raises it to her in a little half-salute, mocking himself as much as honoring her, and takes a sip. “Better?”

“Yes, thank you.” It’s tempting to ask him what the hell he hopes to accomplish here - he’s not the kind of man to take advantage of her state, and he’s got to know this isn’t going to change anything about the two of them. It can’t. He’s a good man, though, even if he annoys her, and she just shakes her head and works on her drink. Maybe in time they can be friends, if he’ll just lay off the delusions. Just sitting here drinking with him isn’t so bad. In fact, it’s kind of...

“Susan...”

Definitely too much to hope. “I’m not in the mood, Marcus. Just drink your beer.”

“If you say so.” 

_It figures it’d be a beer._ Honest, forthright, nothing fancy, nothing pretentious. It suits him. Hell, the dark brown brew even matches his robes. In another life, she’d find all of this attractive. He’s the kind of man she could count on to fight back to back with her in a bad spot, tease her out of a bad mood with all his random, stupid jokes, and share a quiet drink at the end of the day. And he’s not bad looking, if slightly goofy. All of this ought to matter. 

She finishes the drink, tips the bartender. “Thanks for the drink,” she tells Marcus because it’d be rude not to say anything.

He starts to stand, one hand already moving to support her elbow. “I’ll walk you back--”

“No, I’m fine.”

He doesn’t argue, even though he looks a bit dubious. She’s not sure whether to be grateful or disappointed, but it’s better in the end. She can’t go through this again. She leaves with as much dignity and grace as she can manage with as much alcohol as she’d drunk, and barely reaches her quarters before passing out. It’s not the best way to live, but it’s safer this way, for both of them.


End file.
